Jason Gorber

This heroic journey is Ani’s story through and through. It’s a brilliant role, written with such range that it takes Madison’s strong performance to bring her to life without succumbing to archness. She makes us believe every second.

This bleak and profound meditation on diminishing faculties results in a shattering work of cinema. I was left shaking with the results, drawn in completely to the film’s shifts in tone and character, anchored throughout by Hopkin’s impeccable performance.

The story navigates the fine line between community pride and nationalistic zeal, providing lessons for a future while admitting to the existential futility of it all. We can shift our perspective, but every time we do, things stay pretty much the same.

For a debut to be this assured, and for a script to so deftly dance around the obvious challenges and result in a film that’s delightfully, darkly comedic, The Unknown Saint shows that despite all the obvious ways in which this work could have gone horribly, risibly wrong in these rare cases miracles can come true.

It manages in a concise and remarkable way to illustrate not only the ravages of this new virus but how its effects continue to resonate no matter the political forces looking to downplay its risks.

Berger’s latest is a blast of brilliance, with a supremely compelling story driven by some astonishing performances.

It’s a film that’s emotional, exhilarating, and essential.

Kogonada’s precision, akin to the blend we witness the master tea maker assembling, prodding gently with a wooden utensil to craft a perfect mix of ingredients, results in a heady brew that’s both intoxicating and delicious.

Dancing between the ruminative and the revelatory, it never succumbs to being maudlin or cloying. The Life of Chuck is a modern fable told with the deftness of a fairy tale, with the sheer exuberance of a musical while exuding the same sense of wonder one gets staring up at the heavens.

The end result is a real pleasure, taking us along for a wild ride. Yes, it’s slightly too long, and Baker and his team could probably trim a bit to make things even tighter. Yet there’s so much charm at play, so much joy in watching even the moments of pain and embarrassment that it’s difficult to criticize.

There’s so much joy in this telling, so much sophistication of craft on display, and such a delightful ode to this exemplary era of creativity, that it seems downright churlish to hold back for the sake of performative reticence.

Certain to energize longtime fans and generate new ones for generations to come, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is a masterwork of montage. It’s a definitive doc that gives the sense of how the artist changed popular music, but also about how at his core he was a man with a powerful voice and a zealous need to entertain.

This is an intimate film with grand ideas, a small boat floating on a giant ocean, and the extraordinary discovery at the heart of the narrative is outweighed by the sense as a filmgoer that we’re seeing a talented director coming to the surface, sticking her tendrils in, and reshaping our expectations as we’re taken along for the journey.

Like a beautifully constructed puzzle box, The Wild Goose Lake various layers unfold in satisfying ways. With elegant violence, emotional richness and a complex yet coherent storyline, this is a rare bit of crime thriller treat that truly pays off.

This is a tonally rich, libidinously powerful, and psychologically complex tale told by a master filmmaker equally at ease with European art-film conventions and B-movie hijinks. It’s this exceptional balance between the profane and the profound that sets Benedetta apart, truly proving to be penetrating in its effect in more ways than one.

The performances are stellar, the pacing both restrained and engaging, the realization of Cohn and Trump’s world is top notch, and the dynamic between the two is as captivating as any.

If you go into Bookworm expecting more of the same chills and thrills from Timpson and his collaborators, you may be put off by this far more accessible tale. Yet, peering closer, you can see reflections of the same rich emotional and character beats that have always been lingering within the more sordid genre trappings of Timpson’s previous work.

Cassel and Kruger shine, but the rest of the performances feel either staid or over-the-top. Some of the story comes across as pretentious, and some of the pacing is disjointed and inelegant.

It’s a boldly uncompromising work that strips some of the more cheerful elements to the bone. Yet despite this, there’s still a sense of warmth, of optimism, of quiet humor that shows how this deft storyteller can still surprise and enthrall, incorporating another exceptional ensemble willing and able to do the work to bring his lines to life.

Casablanca Beats drums its ideas loudly and effectively. The result is a boisterous and crowd-pleasing delight, showing a community with deep specificity that nonetheless speaks to the concerns of young people all over the world.

It’s a film that’s serious about play, and humble about the need for joy. Piece by Piece is, quite simply, bricktacularly brilliant.

The very act of filmmaking itself helps Porcelain War battle against those that wish to erase this delicate yet resilient culture.

While Carax’s cinema may not be to everyone’s taste, this primer on both his philosophy and his aesthetic is as effective as anything he’s ever directed. Brilliant in its concision, even the most jarring of elements never overstay their welcome, making this perhaps the purest and most honest chapter in his entire filmography.

Making dumb seem clever, and clever seem silly, Matt Johnson and company take their mockumentary shtick to new and dizzying heights, literally.

This is the story of one who stood up, with all his faults and flaws, one whose ideology you may not agree with, but whose capacity to show justifiable rage speaks for those too cowardly to act. It’s here that Pink’s film derives its most impressive impact, and while few may mourn for The Last Republican as both the nation and the world race toward a chaotic, uncertain future, the end result is easily one of the best docs of the year.

Bold, effective, and brilliant in equal measure, Moll’s film is a fine policier in the grandest of traditions, joining a long line of noir-inflected French police dramas unafraid of being more than vehicles for action and retribution.

On the one hand, Seeds provides a unique glimpse into one family’s joys and struggles, while on the other it delves delicately yet effectively into larger questions of policy, politics, the scars of the past, and the challenges of the present.

Elton John: Never Too Late feels like the definitive authorized film biography, and plugs a very important hole in telling his story in honest yet compelling ways.